Budayeen Nights is a collection of stories all set in or derived from the setting of Effinger’s Marid Audran books which all centre around the Budayeen – the sleazy old quarter of a fictitious North African Arab city – and whilst there are a couple of excellent stories I’d suggest it is mainly for Marid Audran completeists. The thing to appreciate about this set of stories is that Effinger died when he had only a few chapters of the fourth Audran book written and only a very short passage of a fifth book about Audran’s estranged brother. And publishing these fragments in this collection frankly made me appreciate Terry Pratchett’s decision to have all his incomplete work destroyed after his death. It’s not that they’re bad, it’s that they are simply incomplete; reading them leaves you wanting more, as they are only beginnings with no middle or end. Very unsatisfactory. As such I don’t recommend this book as an introduction to either Effinger or his Audran books; rather it serves to give readers of those books some extra background and colour, and a look at where they might have gone had Effinger lived longer.
Schrödinger’s Kitten is without doubt the cream of the crop, having won the Hugo, Nebula and Seiun awards. It explores the multiple branching realities suggested (though never actually predicted) by quantum physics. Many other authors have played with these ideas but Effinger’s take is clever and well-constructed. Despite my earlier comments, a cheap copy of this book would almost be worth getting for this story alone and at around 30 pages it almost qualifies as a novella.
Marid Changes his mind: Effinger liked to begin his books with an often unrelated and almost standalone short story by way of introduction and this story is actually simply the first few chapters of the second of Effinger’s Audran books – A Fire in the Sun. As stated above, I really don’t recommend this book as an introduction, and as someone who has already read the three Audran books this feels to me like no more than padding to bring this collection up to a marketable size.
Slow, Slow Burn is not strictly speaking a Budayeen story but is about a character – Honey Pilar – who is frequently mentioned but never met in the Audran books. Moddies are implants that feature prominently in all the books and that bestow on the user a totally different character, either fictitious or recorded from a real person, and Honey Pilar is the most successful recorder of sexual encounter moddies. A lightweight story that is still fun in allowing the reader to finally meet the enigmatic Pilar character. It’s not an explicit sexual story but it’s easy to see why it was originally published in Playboy!
Marid and the Trail of Blood is Effinger’s moddy based science fiction take on the vampire genre. An enjoyable little mystery.
King of the Cyber Rifles is again not really a Budayeen based story but rather explores how the implant technology of the Audran books could be applied to the military, with a single soldier remote controlling multiple unmanned gun emplacements. Written in 1987 and long before the modern era of remote controlled drones it feels today rather prophetic of the possible future direction warfare might take. Probably my second favourite story after Schrödinger’s Kitten.
Marid Throws a Party is the first couple of chapters of Effinger’s uncompleted fourth Audran book and, whilst it is well written and does give a feel for where the story would have been heading, its incomplete nature makes it ultimately unsatisfactory.
The World as We Know It is set after the end of the above uncompleted novel and whilst the narrator is never named it is very obviously Marid Audran. For me this is a rather confused and confusing future crime mystery.
The City on the Sand is effectively a precursor to the Audran stories. Wrtten before those stories it is the first time the Budayeen appears in any of Effinger’s works and is primarily the internal thoughts of a burnt-out aspiring poet sitting at a café table watching the Budayeen world going by. I’m not sure whether this is a masterly piece of evocative, melancholic writing or just a depressingly melancholic piece of writing! It is however interesting in that the main character is clearly modelled on Effinger himself and his habit of spending the day sitting outside cafés in New Orleans’ French quarter upon which the Budayeen itself is modelled.
The Plastic Pasha is the start of another incomplete book that is really an offshoot of the Audran books featuring his kid brother who had been sold when Audran was very young. Another unsatisfactory fragment.
Overall a very mixed bag and, with the exception of Schrödinger’s Kitten which stands brilliantly on its own, is mostly only likely to be of interest to anyone who has already read all of the Audran books.
3/4 stars
Schrödinger’s Kitten is without doubt the cream of the crop, having won the Hugo, Nebula and Seiun awards. It explores the multiple branching realities suggested (though never actually predicted) by quantum physics. Many other authors have played with these ideas but Effinger’s take is clever and well-constructed. Despite my earlier comments, a cheap copy of this book would almost be worth getting for this story alone and at around 30 pages it almost qualifies as a novella.
Marid Changes his mind: Effinger liked to begin his books with an often unrelated and almost standalone short story by way of introduction and this story is actually simply the first few chapters of the second of Effinger’s Audran books – A Fire in the Sun. As stated above, I really don’t recommend this book as an introduction, and as someone who has already read the three Audran books this feels to me like no more than padding to bring this collection up to a marketable size.
Slow, Slow Burn is not strictly speaking a Budayeen story but is about a character – Honey Pilar – who is frequently mentioned but never met in the Audran books. Moddies are implants that feature prominently in all the books and that bestow on the user a totally different character, either fictitious or recorded from a real person, and Honey Pilar is the most successful recorder of sexual encounter moddies. A lightweight story that is still fun in allowing the reader to finally meet the enigmatic Pilar character. It’s not an explicit sexual story but it’s easy to see why it was originally published in Playboy!
Marid and the Trail of Blood is Effinger’s moddy based science fiction take on the vampire genre. An enjoyable little mystery.
King of the Cyber Rifles is again not really a Budayeen based story but rather explores how the implant technology of the Audran books could be applied to the military, with a single soldier remote controlling multiple unmanned gun emplacements. Written in 1987 and long before the modern era of remote controlled drones it feels today rather prophetic of the possible future direction warfare might take. Probably my second favourite story after Schrödinger’s Kitten.
Marid Throws a Party is the first couple of chapters of Effinger’s uncompleted fourth Audran book and, whilst it is well written and does give a feel for where the story would have been heading, its incomplete nature makes it ultimately unsatisfactory.
The World as We Know It is set after the end of the above uncompleted novel and whilst the narrator is never named it is very obviously Marid Audran. For me this is a rather confused and confusing future crime mystery.
The City on the Sand is effectively a precursor to the Audran stories. Wrtten before those stories it is the first time the Budayeen appears in any of Effinger’s works and is primarily the internal thoughts of a burnt-out aspiring poet sitting at a café table watching the Budayeen world going by. I’m not sure whether this is a masterly piece of evocative, melancholic writing or just a depressingly melancholic piece of writing! It is however interesting in that the main character is clearly modelled on Effinger himself and his habit of spending the day sitting outside cafés in New Orleans’ French quarter upon which the Budayeen itself is modelled.
The Plastic Pasha is the start of another incomplete book that is really an offshoot of the Audran books featuring his kid brother who had been sold when Audran was very young. Another unsatisfactory fragment.
Overall a very mixed bag and, with the exception of Schrödinger’s Kitten which stands brilliantly on its own, is mostly only likely to be of interest to anyone who has already read all of the Audran books.
3/4 stars
